Will it dye?

Finding things in nature and seeing if I can dye with them. Always cotton, sometimes silk. By . Sister project of .

06/05/2024

I had such high hopes for my dye garden this year but other events got in the way. Luckily, a fellow member of Black Sheep Handweavers Guild needed to rehome this lovely indigo plant so I'll be able to do some fresh leaf dyeing later this summer. 💙

04/24/2024

I repotted my madder plants to celebrate their one year birthday! Just two more years to go before I harvest 😅

04/17/2024

Plum branch on cotton!

Another pruning-turned-dye-bath opportunity. These are branches from our plum tree. The dye bath definitely smelled fruity and produced this interesting orange color after much soaking. A little unexpected!

04/10/2024

California sage brush on cotton!

This sage brush made an overwhelmingly herbal/medicinal scented dye bath! My partner said the plant is also called "cowboy cologne." 🤣🤠 He pruned the bush in our yard and left the discards for me to dye with. They dried out and released their color immediately. The best color came in the first bath, and the longer the sage remained in the dye bath, the more the color turned brownish.

04/03/2024

Loquat V2: Dried Leaves!

Let’s revisit another dye material this week: loquat leaves! I was curious as to whether dried leaves would give the same color as fresh. These leaves came from the same harvest as my fresh loquat but were dried in our garden shed for 3 months. You can definitely see how this color relates to this fresh version, but it's more brown. It reminds me of desert stone.

03/27/2024

Cosmos V2 with an epic 5 dye baths!

I initially featured my garden cosmos back in November. Since then, I used the flower to dye fabric for my garden quilt and was surprised the mildness in the color. I did a few more experiments, trying to get more depth of shade and variation for the quilt. These included more and more exhaust baths and dyeing over some of my initial dips. My experiments were rewarded – as the exhaust baths went on, I got more reddish shades. ❤️‍🔥

(And I still have some of the dried cosmos in my shop if you want to experiment with them! https://fibercuriousclub.etsy.com)

03/20/2024

Fresh oxalis on cotton!

Oxalis is ALL OVER the Bay Area this time of year. It’s considered a w**d, but it can also be used as a dye. The first dye bath looks absolutely florescent: pure highlighter! I’ve heard that this flower must be used fresh, which means there’s a dried oxalis experiment in my future. 🔎

03/13/2024

I'm making a quilt to commemorate my first year as a grower of natural dye plants. It contains dyed fabric (including some eco prints) of all the flowers I grew specifically for dyeing last year, alongside a few favorites already growing in our yard (pomegranate + loquat). It's huge!! Big enough for a bedspread. I'm currently designing the back. It will include cyanotypes of plants and seeds as well as documentation about the plants used.

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Posted • My garden quilt WIP. Started March of last year when I planted my first seeds; currently in progress with the quilt top.
All colors come from plants in the garden, either grown by me specifically for dyeing or grown by and coincidentally a color-producer.
Each shape is made from shades of the same plant. Coreopsis, Cosmos, Hopi Dye Sunflower, Indigo, Loquat, Madder, Marigold, Pomegranate. Can you guess which is which?! 🌺 🌱

03/06/2024

I'm on a roll with my ecoprints! For today's Will-It-Dye-Wednesday, here's another fresh ecoprint: Marigold. The flowers are too bulky to bundle dye, so I sprinkled the petals on mordanted cotton. A little more abstract then my other prints but it has great texture.🧡

02/28/2024

My Coreopsis looks amazing as an ecoprint! I love how the you can see the different colors on the petals. This was printed on mordanted cotton.

02/21/2024

A perk of growing your own plants: fresh eco-prints! This is Cosmos on cotton. I love how clearly you can see all parts of the flower. The print really captures its essence.

02/15/2024

Blackberry Bramble on combed cotton and premium muslin.

My partner trimmed some thorny blackberry bramble from behind our shed. Into the dye pot it goes!

I pruned the leaves into the pot, heated it, then let it sit overnight to deepen the color before dyeing. A test of muslin with the leaves still in the pot gives flamelike texture and a golden yellow color. I then removed the leaves and did one dye bath and one exhaust on combed cotton.

Address

San Jose, CA

Website

https://www.allykraus.com/experiments-in-natural-dyeing, https://www.etsy.com/shop/FiberCuriousClub?section_id=46247770

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